Y2K: We're All in This Together

[John Walker <jwalker@networx.on.ca>]

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Topic: Common sense discussion of the Year 2000 problem and what
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Hunger HURTS, let's make sure everyone has enough this holiday season!
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Y2K: We're All in This Together

by Declan McCullagh
9:00 a.m.  16.Dec.98.PST

http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/16857.html

WASHINGTON -- Gordon Davidson is an unlikely prophet of doom. With
his mop of speckled gray hair and a quirky smile that never quits,
Davidson looks more like an amicable ice cream truck driver than
someone who spends his days warning communities of possible food
shortages and blackouts. But if towns and local governments don't act
now, Davidson believes that's exactly what the Y2K computer snafu
will beget.

"Very reputable and solid people who understand the problem are
thinking this could be serious," he told a roomful of 40 local
activists who gathered Monday evening in the offices of the
Washington DC-based non-denominational group he heads, the Center for
Visionary Leadership. "How do we make sure everyone is adequately
prepared?"

Frustrated by naysaying neighbors, misleading media coverage, and
recalcitrant bureaucrats who refuse to recognize the potential for
calamity, these folks are raising awareness the old-fashioned way:
They're doing it themselves.

A plan of action is gradually developing during these weekly
meetings in the center's offices on Wisconsin Avenue, just up the
street from the National Cathedral. A broad outline discussed Monday
includes a coordinated assault on the collected forces of Y2K
ignorance and denial: communities, local leaders, and the media.

A team of organizers trekked in from Shepherdstown, West Virginia,
to recount a cheering tale of Y2K success. Curt Bury, a
telecommunications consultant, described how the four awareness
meetings he helped to organize drew a total of 130 locals -- a
respectable turnout for a small town of just 1,200.

In Tacoma Park, the city council has OK'd the creation of a Y2K
group, and plans are being laid for a citywide forum in Washington DC
next month. Fledgling organizations are taking wing in nearby
Greenbelt and Friendship Heights.

"Unless everyone is prepared, none of us is prepared," Davidson
says.

To say a wave of Y2K activism is sweeping the country would be
reckless exaggeration. It's more like a ripple -- but one that
promises to grow. The Colorado-based Cassandra Project lists 150
local Y2K groups from Anchorage, Alaska to Yuba City, California.

But with 380 days left, there's scant time to organize. And 40
people from a metropolitan area with a population of millions are
hardly a hallmark of widespread awareness and concern. At a recent
luncheon, Y2K programmers complained that local officials ignored
their worries about potential power and telecommunications glitches
-- a complaint echoed at Monday's meeting.

Members of the West Virginia group offered their suggestion. They
figure that once meetings and newspaper articles draw enough
attention, local government officials will have no choice but to
wake up and address the problem. "That's another strategy. Create
enough public awareness that they can't ignore it," Davidson says.

Of course, if computer glitches are minor, Y2K agitators run the
risk of looking like reactionary fools. That's fine with them. Even a
miniscule chance of chaos is enough to sound the alarm bell, they
say.

But if disruptions are severe, they see an upside. "It might not be
a totally bad thing if we got back in touch with life as most of the
human species experiences it," one audience member said. Others
wondered if a Y2K crisis could strengthen communities.

Predicting the worst and hoping for the best means personal
preparedness, including stockpiling food and investigating solar
power or generators, measures that evoke a survivalist stereotype
these activists hope to avoid.

The media aren't helping. Davidson complains that the TV crews that
have begun to contact him are more sensational than serious. "What
they were most interested in filming was people storing food in
their houses," he says.

Not only do some participants in the meeting consider it somewhat
gauche to be asked how much food they've stored -- it's akin to
demanding someone's bank records -- but the go-it-alone message runs
contrary to the center's communitarian views.

Davidson closed the meeting by asking the participants to join hands
in a circle, and the executive director of the center, Corinne
McLaughlin, offered a prayer.

"In each of us is the resources inwardly to address this crisis, and
we'd like to ask for help for our nation and our world. Ask for help
from God, from spirit, however you call this greater reality," she
said.

Links:

http://www.visionarylead.org/

http://www.visionarylead.org/cvl-prog.htm#Y2K Community Solutions
Solutions

http://cassandraproject.org/home.html

http://www.visionarylead.org/cvl-dirs.htm

-------------

Also in this issue:

- Note: New List: Y2K Planning
    http://www.bestnet.org/~jwalker/ml.htm
- Y2K Preparedness -- Red Cross Disaster Services
    What is "Y2K" and why are people concerned?
- Basics are what really count in e-mail
    Of all the applications invented to run on corporate networks,
    e-mail is still the most widespread--and the most important. As much
    as we complain about the growing mounds of digital junk mail, most
    corporations would come to a standstill without their e-mail
    systems.
- Cyberphobia in China
    China's leaders have been struggling to control cyberspace ever
    since the first e-mail landed in a Middle Kingdom in-box. In the
    latest chapter of this story, the government has put a 30-year-old
    Shanghai Netpreneur on trial.
- Welcoming Your Web Site In From The Cold
    So I was hanging out in the local Barnes and Noble over the weekend
    next to a big "barnesandnoble.com banner" when I overheard the
    following conversation:
- Women's growing addiction to the internet
    Women are increasingly using the Internet
    People who are addicted to the Internet are more likely to be
    thirty-something women than the stereotyped shy, male teenagers,
    according to new research.
- Tracking Bogus Brands Online
    An eBay auction of so-called herbal Viagra was abruptly halted
    Tuesday after Pfizer got wind of the sale. Such counterfeit products
    are finding a market on Internet auction sites, and Pfizer, which
    makes Viagra, is just one manufacturer preparing to crack down.
- Y2K: We're All in This Together
    WASHINGTON -- Gordon Davidson is an unlikely prophet of doom. With
    his mop of speckled gray hair and a quirky smile that never quits,
    Davidson looks more like an amicable ice cream truck driver than
    someone who spends his days warning communities of possible food
    shortages and blackouts. But if towns and local governments don't
    act now, Davidson believes that's exactly what the Y2K computer snafu
    will beget.
- New Lists and Journals
    1) Electronic Journal of Orthopaedics
    2) Food and Beverage Journal
    3) Free Access
    4) FROGLOG : newsletter of the Declining Amphibian Populations
                 Task Force
    5) Hit-N-Miss
    6) Infinite Dimensional Analysis, Quantum Probability and Related
       Topics
    7) Inside Microsoft Office 97
    8) linkages/journal/ (UN Commission on Sustainable Development)
    9) Modern Physician
   10) NASA History: News and Notes
   11) Law Library Resource Xchange
   12) The National Provisioner





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